


And Thence into Legend

by StarlightAsteria



Series: Like the Songs [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Reincarnation, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 05:50:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18565216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlightAsteria/pseuds/StarlightAsteria
Summary: for from life they pass to deathand from death into songfrom song into mythinto another life everlastingand thenceand thence into legenda continuation of 'Like the Songs'; vignette style.





	And Thence into Legend

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! This is the sequel to 'Like the Songs' I've been fiddling around with for a while. This probably won't make much sense if you haven't read that first.
> 
> As always I enjoy hearing what all you lovely readers think!
> 
> Enjoy!

 

AND THENCE INTO LEGEND

_ a sequel to  _ LIKE THE SONGS

 

JAIME LANNISTER

 

 

It is still and calm, and when he blinks open green eyes he finds himself staring up at a forest canopy; old and hushed, dappled here and there with golden sun where the light falls through the leaves. He thinks he hears a stream nearby. Dazed, he rubs his eyes and pushes himself up to a seated -

 

He stills in shock.

 

Despite several years passing, it is a habit he has not been entirely able to break, but this time, instead of being met with a dull thunk of metal and lancing, shooting spikes of pain up his right arm - 

 

He blinks.

 

This is a dream. He must be dreaming.

 

Because he has his right hand again, and his palm is sinking into the soil, soft and crumbly against his palm, his fingers digging in - he has his right hand again. And it is in looking down that he - what in the seven hells is he wearing? the armour is not armour he recognises, and he stands, bewildered, and when he catches sight of his reflection in the water of the stream he curses fluently, loudly, and at great length. 

 

His armour is metal plate, somehow treated and sewn together into interlocking metal strips, each the width of his thumb, and as flexible as cloth or leather. It is light, too, because he hardly feels the weight of it. Either that, or he has somehow acquired greater strength in his time -

 

What exactly is he - he remembers, oh gods he remembers - 

 

Winterfell, Sansa in his arms, the fire. Sansa embracing him, Sansa loving him, Sansa reciprocating his declaration and then - and then -  _ dracarys -  _ and screaming. 

 

If this is the afterlife, it is a very strange afterlife, he thinks, bemused. Because his armour is not his and yet it fits him as though it was made for him, and the same with his clothes. The embroidery, with discrete borders and hems, feels familiar, somehow, but this forest is not one he recognises.  

 

Kneeling by the stream, thinking that the cold water will revive him and - well, make him come back to his senses, perhaps, he cups the water with his hands - both hands, he has his right hand again and gods he is dreaming, he must be dreaming - he splashes water over his face, the cold shocking him. He scrubs idly at his skin, pushing back his hair from his face and freezes. His ears are strange, pointed, and his skin is glowing -  _ glowing -  _ as though lit from the inside, __ but he does not have time to contemplate these differences because a low rumbling from behind him startles him. 

 

He turns around and gapes.

 

There is a lion, sitting on his haunches, watching him. Doing nothing, tail twitching, watching Jaime, front paws wrapped around a sword. The lion pushes the weapon towards him, and gingerly, moving slowly, carefully, Jaime reaches for the blade. When his right hand closes around the hilt, the lion flops casually onto his side and begins to purr like an oversized housecat, a pleased, low rumble of sound, and Jaime belts the weapon to his waist and laughs, in awe, in shock, in utter, unadulterated confusion. Possessed by he knows not what recklessness, he comes closer still to sink his left hand into the lion's mane. The purrs intensify, and Jaime bites down a yelp when the lion suddenly rolls so he is lying on his stomach, and not his side, and nudges Jaime's ribs with the side of his massive head.

 

Jaime stares at the lion, uncomprehending. The lion repeats his movement, more insistently, this time, and Jaime stumbles into the lion's body, reflexively clutching at the golden brown mane to keep himself upright. The lion does the same again, and Jaime's jaw drops.

 

"Surely you do not want me to..." he trails off. Whoever heard of a man riding a lion? But the lion nudges him again and so Jaime swings a cautious leg over the lion's back to sit astride, praying with everything that he is that he is not misreading things, that he is not being, as Tyrion had always been so fond of reminding him, an idiot. When Jaime is settled upon his new mount the lion does nothing. There is no sudden bunching of the muscles, a prelude to being thrown off, only stillness. "What now?" Jaime wonders.

 

Understanding him, somehow, the lion raises himself to his full height, and then they are off, loping through the woods, and Jaime finds his spirits somewhere between terror and exhilaration, or perhaps it is both, and he laughs again, content simply to revel in this experience and not worry about where he is or where he is going. Strangely, he trusts the lion. 

 

The lion stops suddenly and Jaime almost falls off right into a nice puddle of mud, clutching tightly at the mane to right himself. The lion turns his head to look at him, a glint of amusement shimmering in those intelligent eyes, and Jaime bows his head in acknowledgement of the point. "I am rather surprised by all of this, my friend, and you enjoy it. It is well, I suppose, that I can laugh at myself as well as you, or else I might take offence."

 

The lion rumbles, and then falls silent, waiting, and Jaime with him, his curiosity strained. He does not reach for his blade, for the lion is calm, and Jaime finds he trusts his new companion, though that is perhaps foolhardy of him. 

 

The silence is broken by a rustling of leaves, high, clear laughter, suddenly from the gap between two trees emerges a direwolf, leaping daintily into the clearing, halting right in front of him, and upon the direwolf - upon the direwolf - 

 

Everything falls away around him - sight, sound, taste, touch, scent - all of it fades into insignificance - he can barely breathe, he drowns and is reborn in her sunset eyes, the shock and joy in her face at seeing him makes his heart ache - he drinks in the sight of her, ravenously. She is shining and happy and ethereal and everything he has ever wanted, and she is in front of him, alive.

 

He has dismounted and is striding towards her before he is even aware of it and takes her into his arms. "Sansa," he breathes, hardly daring to believe it. "Sansa, Sansa, Sansa," he murmurs into her neck, her fragrant hair. 

 

She speaks his name in reply, in the low, private tones she had used in Winterfell when they were alone, in another lifetime. "I knew you would come. I knew."

 

He lifts his head to look at her, lifting his right hand from her waist to trace her features with trembling fingers; her eyebrows, the straight line of her nose, the softness of her cheeks, lingering upon the pink give of her mouth under his thumb. She is beautiful, and when she looks at him as she is doing now, with such an expression in her glimmering eyes, softly, tenderly, as though he is the worthiest thing she has ever come across, her admiration of him - he is hers, utterly, wholly, irrevocably, and he kisses her.

 

He kisses her ardently, drawing her against him, one hand pressing against her lower back, the other tangled in her shining russet hair, pouring everything he is into his kiss, and she melts under his lips, sighing happily into his mouth, soft against his hard frame, mewling, pressing herself more closely to him, holding him to her, one gentle hand against his jaw, the other clutching at his shoulder, and she matches his passion wholeheartedly, and they continue thus, indulging themselves, revelling in this affection, at great length, gasping, whispering endearments and promises to one another as they part only to breathe before coming together again, again and again and again - 

 

"Will you introduce us, little sister?" 

 

Sansa and Jaime break apart, startled, their hair thoroughly ruffled. Sansa recovers more quickly than him. Watching them with indulged amusement are two - well, Sansa's brothers, he supposes, though he does not recognise either of them. One has dark hair falling down half way down his back, tied out of his face with a leather tie and his sister's blue eyes, the other blonder hair than Jaime's falling to his waist and stormy grey eyes. They are both dressed more richly than ever the Tyrells were, though with considerably more taste than that family. The first brother, the one with dark hair, rides a black direwolf the size of a horse, and the second brother rides what he remembers Sansa once describing as an elk. He blinks. What strange forest has he wandered into?

 

"Brothers, this is my - this is the lord whom I would marry, Jaime of the House of Lannister," Sansa replies softly, and Jaime's heart somersaults with joy in his chest. "He stepped in front of dragonfire for me."

 

"This is the high lord you have dreamed of for centuries?" the blonde-haired brother questions, seeking confirmation for something, though what precisely Jaime cannot fathom. Centuries? Jaime frowns, perplexed.

 

"Yes, Thranduil," she replies. "It has only ever been him; the sole bright hope in my nightmares."

 

"I believe you, sister." 

 

" _ Adar  _ and  _ Naneth  _ will agree, you have nothing to fear," the dark haired brother replies, before turning to Jaime, a lopsided grin on his face. "Welcome to the family, my lord. With your lion, you'll fit right in." He laughs briefly, before introducing himself more formally, though the mischevious twinkle never leaves fully his expression. "I am Rovengar, the wild wolf, the second son of the Lord Oropher, cousin to the High King of the Sindar Elu Thingol, though you once knew me as Rickon Stark, and this is mine eldest brother, Thranduil."

 

"I don't understand."

 

"In another life," Sansa says quietly. "When Rickon was slain on the battlefield by that bastard, he was reincarnated here, and given the childhood and the life he should have had, one of peace and happiness."

 

"And you? me?" Jaime asks. "We have been reincarnated too?"

 

"That is why your skin glows, brother-to-be," the Lord Thranduil replies dryly. "You, Rovengar and Sansa, all of you, you are the bright ones, the  _ gailerin _ . It gave our parents quite a shock when first my brother and then my sister came along with that. It is almost unheard of for those of our people to be reincarnated, to be sent back, as the phrasing goes, but not impossible. Though never before siblings. My House is revered and feared equally for such a thing. Once word gets around - and it will, I warn you now, our people are notorious in their love for songs and stories and gossip of all kinds - you can be assured of quite a welcome, once it is known that you fought a dragon for my sister, that your love was so deep and strong that it overcame death, and the gods themselves were so moved by your tale that you were sent back, and given a second chance."

 

"A second chance," Jaime murmurs, struggling to understand everything he has been told, before the words sink into his soul and he grasps their meaning. He looks at Sansa, then, joyfully. "A second chance," he repeats, leaning his forehead against hers, and she kisses him chastely. 

 

"A second chance," she agrees, smiling, her eyes bright with delight. 

 

Something occurs to him then. "You mentioned centuries. I feel as though - the memory of our deaths happened only a moment ago. I can still see Winterfell, and see the dragon queen's face twisted and ugly with fury. I can still feel the heat of the flames." He shudders. Sansa's brothers look ill at his words. "But it has been centuries ago, for you, you said?"

 

"You are no longer mortal," she says gently. "Nor am I, nor Rovengar my brother." She smiles. "Though I am still considered little more than a child amongst my people, only just past my age of majority at three centuries."

 

"You - you are three hundred years old?"

 

"Yes. Rovengar is over a thousand, and Thranduil is older still, though all of us are still considered young," Sansa explains. 

 

He decides that instead of torturing his brain trying to understand it, he can simply accept all of this strange, new information. "Does that mean that you will no longer call me an old man?"

 

"How could I?" she laughs in response to his teasing. "We are babies compared to my elder brothers."

 

"Forgive me if that takes time for me to get used to."

 

She laughs happily, and he could listen to that joyous sound forever, he thinks. He realises, with rising spirits, that he now can do just that.

 

 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts? Comments? Predictions?


End file.
